Uploaded April 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In this lecture, Maria Polugodina, Research Fellow at the FU Berlin and IES Visiting Scholar, discusses the economic effects of the breakup of East Prussia into what is today Poland, Russia and Lithuania. Rather than concentrating on the long-term effects of historical borders, Polugodina explores the effects of dissolution of imperial regions into the boundaries of modern states. She hypothesizes that German imperial legacies in the form of advanced human capital, interethnic tolerance and conservative political preferences may persist in the territories of former East Prussia in Poland, Russia and Lithuania, compared to neighboring regions in their respective countries. Hence, Polugodina studies the possible existence of long-run trade-offs between national identity and regional development, by drawing evidence from institutional data in East-Central Europe.
In this lecture, Maria Polugodina, Research Fellow at the FU Berlin and IES Visiting Scholar, discusses the economic effects of the breakup of East Prussia into what is today Poland, Russia and Lithuania. Rather than concentrating on the long-term effects of historical borders, Polugodina explores the effects of dissolution of imperial regions into the boundaries of modern states. She hypothesizes that German imperial legacies in the form of advanced human capital, interethnic tolerance and conservative political preferences may persist in the territories of former East Prussia in Poland, Russia and Lithuania, compared to neighboring regions in their respective countries. Hence, Polugodina studies the possible existence of long-run trade-offs between national identity and regional development, by drawing evidence from institutional data in East-Central Europe.
